Some City Council members questioned whether they have enough votes to move forward with condemnation proceedings.

"Unless there is a vote for condemnation, it kills it," said Council Member Chris Easthope, D-5th Ward.

Campus Management is located next to Tios Restaurant. The city also wanted to purchase Tios Restaurant and the employee parking lot of The Ann Arbor News for space to construct the parking structure. The restaurant owners have said they don't want to move, although they don't own the building - and the building owners have not said whether they're willing to sell.

If built, the parking structure would be part of a larger redevelopment that would include a new police and courts building on the city hall site.

The letter from Campus Management notes that a city representative inquired whether they were interested in selling to the city.

"In short, our answer was - and still is - an emphatic 'no!' ... Obviously with legal condemnation we will have no choice but to vacate, but in the meantime we are in unanimous agreement to legally challenge any attempt to acquire our property," said the letter, signed by seven people listed as co-owners, president and treasurer of Campus Management.

"We are going to fight it, we have been here since the 1950s ... and we don't want to go anyplace," Gordon W. Schott Jr., a co-owner, said in a phone interview Wednesday. "We wanted to be very emphatic. We do not want to move."

Schott said the city sent an appraiser to the property to get a "condemnation value."
City Administrator Roger Fraser said he hadn't seen the letter but it could be part of the negotiation process. He said ruling out eminent domain would hurt the city's negotiations.

"I don't think I'd be willing to do it as it stands right now," said City Council Member Joan Lowenstein, D-2nd Ward. "I'm not 100 percent convinced that that is the type of civic use that would warrant a condemnation."

Lowenstein said condemnation is considered to be "heavy handed." She said there are other places the city can address parking needs downtown.

The city also has discussed adding underground parking on a city-owned surface lot adjacent to the downtown Ann Arbor District Library.